Meet Adilia

Healing is a gift that emerges from seeds cultivated by struggle, broken borders, and bold dreams​

My name is Adilia Torres, and and I am queer mental health practitioner in the Bay Area. This past year I have been busy cultivating, dreaming, and co-creating in community to bring La Botanica Azul - a container for traditional, culturally-relevant, and ancestral medicine - to life.

When I moved to the Bay Area from Los Angeles, I was welcomed by a community of healers and spiritual relatives at a time when I needed it the most. It is this spiritual community that has inspired the vision for building La Botanica Azul into a brick-and-mortar storefront in the East Bay. Our mission is to showcase local, small-batch herbal medicine and products created by Indigenous, queer, and people of color while also ensuring that this medicine and products are available to diverse communities.

As a mental health practitioner, I firmly believe in a holistic approach to mental health that is integrated with both physical and spiritual health. My work is focused on trauma-informed care and recovery services for children, youth, and families impacted by immigration, displacement, and other forms of oppressions. My daily practice as a mental health clinician is guided and shaped by my own experiences as an immigrant to this country. I migrated to the United States when I was seven years old, and I remained undocumented for 28 years. Raised in Los Angeles as a Chicana-Indigena descended from Sinaloa and Cora from Nayarit, Mexico, I became a Bay Area transplant when I started graduate school 5 years ago.

As a survivor of breast cancer at the age of 28, I found strength and courage through the love and care of other cancer survivors and this informed the beginning of my professional path dedicated to culturally-relevant services imbued with an indigenous approach to healing and medicine. Opening La Botanica Azul is a continuation of my path, of my healing journey, and my life’s work.